SWAT VALLEY, Pakistan — The question for the class of 10th graders at an all-girls school
here in this picturesque mountain valley was a simple one: How many of them, a
district official wanted to know, had heard of Malala Yousafzai?

The students stared at
the official, Farrukh Atiq, in silence. Not a single hand was raised.

It is not just that the
schoolchildren fear becoming targets, though that is certainly an element in
their caution. “I am against Malala,” said Muhammad Ayaz, 22, a trader who runs
a small store beside Ms. Yousafzai’s old school in Mingora, the main town in
the Swat Valley. “The media has projected Malala as a heroine of the West. But
what has she done for Swat?”

That sense of smoldering
animosity toward Ms. Yousafzai, 16, in the Swat Valley — which she hurriedly
left aboard a military helicopter for treatment last year after being shot —
seems to be animated in part by the tensions of a rural community still
traumatized by conflict.

Although the Pakistani
Army forced the Taliban from Swat during a major military operation in 2009,
pockets of militants remain, occasionally striking against soldiers or
activists like Ms. Yousafzai.

Many residents fear the
Islamists could one day return to power in the valley, an anxiety that,
paradoxically, has stoked simmering hostility toward the militants’ most famous
victim.

“What is her contribution?”
asked Khursheed Dada, a worker with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, which
governs Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, including Swat.

That cynicism was echoed
this week across Pakistan, where conspiracy-minded citizens loudly branded Ms.
Yousafzai a C.I.A. agent, part of a nebulous Western plot to humiliate their
country and pressure their government.

Muhammad Asim, a student
standing outside the gates of Punjab University in the eastern city of Lahore,
dismissed the Taliban attack on Ms. Yousafzai as a made-for-TV drama. “How can
a girl survive after being shot in the head?” he asked. “It doesn’t make
sense.”

The reaction seemed to
stem from different places: sensitivity at Western hectoring, a confused
narrative about the Taliban and a sense of resentment or downright jealousy.

In Swat, some critics
accused Ms. Yousafzai’s father, Ziauddin, of using his precocious daughter to
drum up publicity and of maligning Pashtun culture. Others said the intense
publicity had cast their district in a negative light, overshadowing the good
work of other Pakistanis in education.

Dilshad Begum, the
district education officer for Swat, said that 14,000 girls and 17,000 boys had
recently started school after an intensive door-to-door enrollment campaign led
by local teachers. The threat from the Taliban was exaggerated, she added.

“I have been working for
female education for 25 years, and never received a threat,” she said.

Even fellow students
seemed to resent the recognition Ms. Yousafzai has received. At another school,
a group of female students, assembled by their headmaster, agreed that Ms.
Yousafzai did not deserve a Nobel Prize.

“Malala is not the only
role model for Pakistani girls,” said Kainat Ali, 16, who wore a black burqa.

Not all Pakistanis
joined in the criticism. Many expressed pride in the bravery of their most
famous teenager, who has had tea with Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace
and received a standing ovation at the United Nations. By
Friday there was a groundswell of support. Television stations broadcast songs
lauding her work, and good luck messages flooded Facebook and Twitter. Students
and women, in particular, said they had been inspired by her.

After the Nobel winner
was announced, some openly expressed disappointment. In Swat, Shahid Iqbal, a
music and movie store owner, said Ms. Yousafzai had made their district proud.
“Malala is our daughter. She should have won the Nobel,” he said.

Imran Khan, the former
cricketer who heads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and has regularly faced
criticism for his views on the Taliban, said Ms. Yousafzai represented “the
struggle of girls and women everywhere against tyranny and oppression.”

One of the more poignant
scenes unfolded in the port city of Karachi, where Atiya Arshad, an 11-year-old girl who was
also shot by militants, waited at her home for news of the Nobel Prize.

Atiya was shot twice in
the stomach in March when people suspected of being Taliban militants armed
with guns and grenades attacked her school in Ittehad Town, a poor neighborhood
of Karachi. The attack was part of a broader campaign of intimidation this year
by the Taliban to assert themselves in Pakistan’s largest city.

Some students were
watching a magic show when the attackers struck, but Atiya was lining up to
receive an academic award at a prize ceremony. The school principal, Rasheed
Ahmed, and an 11-year-old girl were killed.

Atiya is now in a
wheelchair, though her doctors are confident that with treatment and therapy
she will be able to walk. She recalled how she was inspired to excel by a visit
to the school by Ms. Yousafzai a year earlier, as part of the campaign to
promote education for girls.

“I was so happy to see
Malala,” she said in an interview. “I don’t know why these people don’t want us
to go to school.”

Her father, a flour mill
worker, noted that in contrast with Ms. Yousafzai, no politicians or
campaigners had rushed to help after his daughter was shot. “We are arranging
her treatment with great difficulty,” he said.

In interviews this week,
Ms. Yousafzai said she was undeterred by the criticism at home, attributing it
to the well-founded cynicism many Pakistanis harbor toward their political
leaders. Still, she told an audience in New York on Thursday, her goal is to
become prime minister of Pakistan one day.

“I can spend much of the
budget on education,” she told Christiane Amanpour of CNN, drawing loud
applause. But few think it would be safe for her to return home any time soon.

Repeated Taliban threats
to kill Ms. Yousafzai should she set foot in Swat again were being taken very
seriously, said Mr. Atiq, the district official. “More fame brings more
danger,” he said. “The threat is greater than ever.”

Ms. Yousafzai has the
consolation of knowing that her message of education for girls now resounds
across the world. When the Taliban gunman boarded her bus in October 2012, he
called out, “Who is Malala?” Now, as she noted in an interview this week, her
voice is heard “in every corner of the world.”

Yet she insists that,
come what may, Pakistan will always be her home. “Even if its people hate me,”
she said one interview, “I will still love it.”